Spiritual heart surgery: It's necessary

CORPUS CHRISTI - In my Bible study at church we are going through a book by Andy Stanley called "Enemies of the Heart." It's a very good, short read that explores four destructive forces within our hearts — guilt, anger, greed and jealousy — and how they creep in to hinder and damage our relationships.

During this study, I have been undergoing spiritual heart surgery, and it has not been pleasant. God has opted not to give me any aesthesia while he operates. Though I balked about that at first, I realized being wide awake as he showed me some unpleasant things about myself was necessary.

Pain can be a great motivator for change. A stabbing pain in your chest will make you want to eat healthier to sustain your heart. The same is true in the spiritual realm, and it got me thinking. We've become so preoccupied with taking care of the physical aspects of our body that we completely neglect our spirit, allowing it to become unhealthy, malnourished and diseased.

There's an old saying in the entertainment industry that says you can never be too rich or too thin. Keeping up an appearance has become top priority, and it is killing us as individuals and as a nation. We are a people who walk around looking and smelling good and owning a bunch of things, yet inside most of us feel like phonies, afraid someone will find out who we really are.

Looking good is everything. You've got to fake it till you make it. But there are some things you can only fake for so long before the truth of what you really feel and think inside exposes you.

In his book, Stanley writes, "We've all grown very adept at covering for our hearts. In fact, we're so good at it that most of us have no idea just how corrupt we really are. But every once in a while our heart goes public. We swear we didn't mean it. But the truth is, we just didn't mean to say it."

In Luke 6:45 Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And in Jeremiah the heart is described as "deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?"

Harboring things like anger, guilt, shame and resentment in the heart is just as bad for it as continually eating the wrong foods. Eventually, they clog up your spiritual arteries, hindering your ability to connect with and receive from God.

In the same way we are careful about what we eat to remain physically fit, we should be careful of the images and thoughts we allow in our minds so we remain spiritually fit.

As David implored in the Psalms, we must allow God to search and cleanse our hearts and show us its condition. Not so God can berate us, but so that, like the adept surgeon he is, he can go in and perform spiritual heart surgery, clearing out the crud that has blocked us from enjoying intimacy with him and others.